By Nury Vittachi

Wednesday, 12 September 2012

10 stupid tourist tales

You won’t believe how dumb people can be or maybe you will

A RESCUER SEARCHED FOR a missing tourist most of the night before realizing she was looking for herself.

She was part of a tourist group which stopped at an Icelandic volcano one afternoon last month. After looking around, she decided to “freshen up” in the toilet, according to a report on C-News, forwarded by reader Amy Sin.

Now to your average male, freshening up is a 0.5 of a second glance in the mirror. But this girl decided to change her make-up and adjust her clothing.

She went back to the coach, but it didn’t move off because the other tourists were was waiting for the original “her”, who was declared missing.

I can imagine the conversation:

A: “What did she look like?”

B: “A lot like you but with different lipstick and no scarf.”

A: (Taking off her lipstick and scarf.) “Like this?”

B: “Yeah, exactly like that. Have you seen her?”

A: “Nope.”

They searched all afternoon and well into the night.

At 3 a.m., just as a rescue helicopter was about to join them, the tourist clicked that the woman who looked exactly like her was her.

Case cracked, and it only took them 10 or 12 hours. Tourists must be getting smarter.

***

Here are the Five Stupidest Tourist Questions.

1) A tourist asked staff at the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau:

“Can you tell me which beach is closest to the ocean?”

2) A tourist in Hong Kong asked a friend of mine:

“What time do they fire the Noon Day Gun?”

3) A tourist in Scotland asked:

“What time do they feed the Loch Ness Monster?”

4) A tourist at Niagara Falls asked:

“What time do they turn the water off?”

5) A tourist in Sri Lanka asked:

“Is this tea freshly picked?”

My friend replied:

“Yes, I keep a bush in the kitchen.”

***

(Tourists all do the same dance at the leaning tower of Pisa)

Thomas Cook and the Association of British Travel Agents revealed the dumbest complaints they had received:

5) From beachgoers:

“The beach was too sandy.”

4) From visitors to India:

“I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry.”

3) From tourists at a coastal resort:

“No one told us there would be fish in the sea.”

2) From a British visitor to Spain:

“There are too many Spanish people.”

1) From a young couple:

“My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant.”

***

IN OTHER NEWS

A REPORTER PHONED me last week to ask me what I thought about the bestseller 50 Shades of Grey.

I replied: “It’s filled with people having guilty thoughts and giving each other smoldering looks, but there’s not much actual sex. It reminded me of my teen years. And twenties. And married life, come to that.” ***

OBSERVATION FROM a person who has been an employer for a long time: “People can get an amazing amount of work done, providing it is not the work they are supposed to be doing.”

***

FINALLY GOT all the bags on the truck, and the family moved to the new house. But no phone, no TV, no computer, no wifi, no clothes. So apologies if I don’t reply to anything for a while…